Not that we enjoy being "All-Conyers-All-The-Time" around here, but he is the man out in front of nearly everything these days, demonstrating what an actual opposition party is supposed to look and sound and act like.

As well, it should not go unnoticed that in the case of a Democratic Majority returning to the U.S. House of Representatives in '06 (yeah, we know the possibilities for that, given who owns the voting machines, but still...), Congressman John Conyers would be the Chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. That is the House Committee which would begin Impeachment Hearings were George W. Bush ever to have done anything that could possibly be considered an Impeachable Offense (as impossible as such as thing is to imagine!)

All of that said, Conyers made a few fairly remarkable comments in his recent interview with RAW STORY which we've only today been able to read in full.

We recommend a read of the entire transcript. The following few grafs, amongst many, certainly caught our attention...

Raw Story's Larisa Alexandrovna: A handful of individuals have thrown around the word impeachment surrounding the president's actions, including former Reagan Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts. Others have called attention to allegations of manipulated intelligence reports, war profiteering, and misuse of appropriated funds. Do you feel we have reached the level of what would be considered “high crimes and misdemeanors” given already what we know?

Conyers: Well, I don't want to comment on that. I think it is more appropriate for me to continue the initial pursuit, which we have not completed yet. But others are talking about it. It is being discussed. It's very hard not to think of this as a serious abuse of power.
...Alexandrovna: Some Raw Story readers have expressed a great deal of concern about what they see as a serious and aggressive consolidation of powers. Some have gone so far as to express concern about possible martial law. Do you think these concerns are valid or are people simply reaching?

Conyers: I'm not so sure that there's a lot of reaching necessary. It's being said all over that when you add up all of these incursions on the constitution itself and the amendments thereto: on the attacks on the Voter Rights Act; the question of national ID that refers to, for the first time, a federal database instead of states controlling the licensing itself; when you look at the audacity of the executive branch to remove questions from the judiciary and reassign them as they choose. We're talking about the violation of the doctrine of the separation of powers, which is a very serious matter.

And in their totality, we're moving into a different kind of country under different kind of law.

That's just a taste, of course, but such comments from a man in his position are chilling to say the least. Remember, Conyers was on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee that voted to Impeach Nixon as well.

We're not one to egregiously invoke either the "F" word (Fascism) or the "I" word (Impeachment), but we do take pause when we consider the number of times in our lives when we've wondered just how a modern, vibrant, educated society like Germany could have slipped into the Fascist Dictatorship that it became pre-WWII without so much as an opposition whimper of note along the way.

Were we a reader of tea-leaves --- and we're not --- we'd certainly be taking a close look at the various leaves beginning to fall into various places which would seem to be indicating that some kind of paradigm shift is afoot.

And at an increasingly breakneck speed at that!

It's almost incredible to take note of it, but we're only four months into the second term of George W. Bush. And for those paying attention, at least, the scale and totality of new abuses of power which fly in the face of our Founding Principles and Constitution seem to be increasing in parrallel with the heavy-handed means by which this Administration and their lackeys in Congress are attempting to cover them up and supress the reporting of same to the American People.

How all of these troubling tea-leaves will eventually line up --- towards our worst nightmares or a suddenly brightening day --- is perhaps too early to tell. Give it another week or two.

Impeach is a word that will never be uttered in this congress. Personally I'm looking to go to Canada, as for the rest of the people staying here: think about what every body in Germany said after WW2. We didn't have any control over it, and we didn't know what was going on.

Okay, okay, okay.... Time to think this through very carefully. How does this sort of thing get pushed out there where "the American public" actually catches it and turns it into a landslide with GW, Rove and Delay underneath it? You know it's going to have to go that route....., but how?

It's time to start the mother of all email, write-in campaigns. If it looks like Conyers is the primary one out there pushing this, we could probably expect his "shocking demise" in a plane accident or "he offed himself in a moment of depression".

Time for the crowd of 6 or 7 to, hopefully, join with a vanguard of other driving forces to frame the demand .for investigation and proceedings to begin. Then hand that set of demands out to absolutely every single Demo leaning emailer we know, urging them to hand them along to every single Demo emailer they know. Everyone then starts driving those notes and demands home to every single member of Congress, day after day, hour after hour, insisting that they begin the inquiry. Brad, is there a way that within your blogging system somewhere there would be a composition and planning "room" of some sort? You know, kind of like an "Online War Room"? Just a thought.

I say the above thinking it a naive approach to changing the world we all know is Bush-state. At the same time, that is exactly the groundswell campaign that is starting to throw the Repugs up against the ropes. They thought they had it made. To their suprise, this massive onslaught of "we the people" is slamming them over and over and over. It's confusing because it used to be that no one ever contacted them in such massive numbers in the past. They didn't expect this.

Time to crank it up a notch as noted above. Organize the deposing of an illegal and fraudulent regime. Draw in the forces of Moveon, Truemajority, the Dems and Howard Dean, the DCCC, on and on and on. There are several million people out there within a scattered array of "systems" that would dearly love to jump on this bandwagon - just need a bunch of folks to say "charge".

re #7 Mark Lloyd Baker: Thanks for the link to Mike Whitney's piece. Chilling stuff indeed. "Operation FALCON" hasn't drawn nearly as much attention as I expected, nearly six weeks ago, when I posted this piece: "Operation FALCON Raises Disturbing Questions". I still think it was significant and scary, and I believe Mike Whitney is right [of course --- he agrees with me!] but what do we do about it? That's the big question.

"The Bush administration is sharpening its talons for the inevitable difficulties it expects to face as a result of its disastrous policies. With each regressive initiative, the governing cabal seems to get increasingly paranoid, anticipating an outburst of public rage. Now, they're orchestrating massive round-ups of minor crooks to make sure that every cog and gear in the apparatus of state repression is lubricated and ready to go."

and

"They want to make sure that everyone knows that they're ready when its time to thin out the ranks of mutinous citizens."

Are we paranoid enough yet? Or are we getting to the steam-spitting, fire-breathing limits of our endurance?!

Peg ,this "bush" needs pulling out "roots" and all otherwise it will sprout a new "head" and they'll make a lot of noise about cleaning things up and more carefully proceed with their original agenda.Joe Citizen will hardly notice ,gotta get the roots like cancer ,leave nothing or its not over.

If we start with one,then we better be sure and get the whole lot of them.Rep. Conyers is a brave man,we all need to start really praying for him to stay safe,he needs to get him someone to watch his back.We do need to start a campaign of emailing and calling our senators and reps.and get them to back conyers,he needs more on his side and NOW.

Why is no one commenting on this? Philadelphia attorney Bill Berg is on a European speaking tour so his RICO lawsuit against President Bush for complicity in 9-11 gets caught on by the European press, because the American MSM is ignoring this. Everyone's talking about "what is the worst thing this administration has done?", and no one is following Phil Berg's RICO lawsuit.

Read below:

Lafayette Hill Attorney Joins 7 European Country Tour
With Multi Millionaire As They Start the Re-Open 9-11 Investigations Campaign

All speaking engagements “Free”

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands, May 19, 2005

PHILIP J. BERG, Esquire, a Lafayette Hill, PA attorney, joined multi-millionaire Jimmy Walter, an American currently living in Europe, for a seven country/eight city tour, after conducting research with a team of experts on the attacks on the Pentagon and the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. The research team uncovered some very disturbing facts that cannot be reconciled with the information provided by the U.S. government and media.

Berg has a RICO [Racketeer Influenced & Corrupt Organizations] Act lawsuit pending against President Bush, Vice President Cheney and 54 other defendants for: 1) foreknowledge of 911; 2) failure to warn; 3) failure to prevent; and cover-up. (Recall that Nixon went down on cover-up alone.) Federal Judge Robreno just issued an Order transferring the case [Rodriguez vs. Bush, 04-cv-4952] from Philadelphia to Federal Court in New York.

Berg’s client, William Rodriguez, is also on the tour. Rodriguez is a 911 hero who rescued many victims from the WTC, where he was a janitor in the North Tower; he accompanied firemen up the fire tower and let them onto the floors with a master key. For his acts of heroism, President Bush honored Rodriguez at the White House. Later, however, he realized that the “official” story is a lie. Rodriguez heard “explosions” in the North Tower before the building fell, confirming the 2+ Richter scale seismic recordings prior to the fall of each tower. Rodriguez was the last person out of the North Tower and is alive today because he dove under a fire truck. Like thousands of others, he still suffers from health problems brought on by the unhealthy conditions at the WTC (disproving another Bush administration claim: EPA Administrator Christy Todd Whitman came to the WTC site on 9/13/01 and said all was well).

At a Press Conference in Amsterdam on May 18th, attorney Berg stated, “Bush and his cronies either made 911 happen or let it happen. If they let it happen, then they made it happen; and they must he held accountable.”

Berg continued, “It is very difficult for many to believe that the U.S. government could be involved. However, I draw your attention to 'Operation Northwoods,' a 1962 documented plan that has now been declassified, in which the joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. military called for the military to destroy American property and to injure and kill American citizens, blaming it on Cuba, in order to win support for a war against Cuba. President John F. Kennedy said ‘No.’ If you change the words from Cuba to Iraq, you have the same situation.”

Berg concluded: “I know many of you recall Golfer Payne Stewart. His plane was off course and fighter jets were called out to check on Stewart's plane --- as fighter jets did 62 times in the year prior to 911. They saw no evidence of life and followed it to South Dakota, where it crashed. Likewise just a week ago, on May 11, 2005, when a small plane wandered off course toward the White House, it was intercepted within minutes by fighter planes. Now, question – Where were the fighter jets on 911? They had about an hour to intercept an airliner that had left its flight path and was heading for Washington D.C. But they never even made it into the air before the Pentagon crash.”

Together with a panel of scientists and journalists who support the investigation, Jimmy Walter will tour through major cities in Europe for panel discussions. The aim of the tour is to point out new non-truths with regard to the investigation as spread by the media directly after the attacks, and to raise awareness about the topic and plan to launch a “true” 911 investigation. The tour will begin in Amsterdam on May 20th.

Philip J. Berg, Esquire, Jimmy Walter and William Rodriguez are available for radio and TV appearances and interviews. Two tours will be conducted, with William Rodriguez on RED team, Philip J. Berg, Esq. on BLUE team, and Jimmy Walter on both tours.
The schedule follows for speaking engagements in: Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, London, Madrid, Vienna, Manchester and Rome.http://www.reopen911.org/http://911forthetruth.com
For further information, please call

Mine is but one voice but I've spread it out through emails, letters, etc., newspaper editors, to congressmen, our governor, our state reps, senators and so on, in both the democratic and republican parties, addressing so many issues such as this illegal war on Iraq, the minority's right to filibuster, the UK memos just to name a few. The only replies I receive are from those state and federal officials who agree with me. I am convinced the republican party round files anything they read that does not support their agenda. It's very discouraging for this one voice to have facts ignored by those who could make a difference. I've signed every petition (including Impeach Bush) that comes my way so that my voice can be added to a lot of other voices but they seem to get no where. I feel as though every so-called investigation that comes up is really an issue that gets swept under the rug to be forgotten forever, i.e., the Valarie Plame investigation, Tom DeLay's investigation, the prisoner abuse investigations. I'm also convinced that what it is going to take to be heard is a major, sign carrying, march on Washington by the masses. What newspaper editor or elected official would or could ignore such a specticle? Strength in numbers and publicly is the way to go.

#6 Gorden has my vote! Its time to declare war on the self appointed "so called president" Bush and his band of devils. It is my firm belife that this country has never had a more serious threat to our way of life before this. We are being attacked on our own ground from deep within the core of America. Everything thats GOOD about this country is being destroyed in a diabolical manner. The media is just another tool they use to lie and spew forth thier "alternate" reality.
The pieces of the the puzzle are starting to fit together now. And the picture thats being revealed since 9-11 is more shocking than most Americans can can even imagine.

Have not read ALL the previous posts yet but I had a few thoughts:
to RLM #16,
I agree with 99% of your comments, but re the war having been endorsed by Congress...they did so based on having been lied to, as the Downing St memo seems to "prove". I only put it in quotes because I want so much for their lies & crimes to come to glaring light & be PROVED without a doubt. Conyers is investigating this very point among other things, as the interview on another thread here shows. I believe if it is indeed proven it does constitute "high crimes & misdemeanors".

And that is only one of MANY serious issues. War profiteering, added to taxpayer money paying for propaganda, added to trying to change the rules of the Senate (only one of many rules-changes), added to election fraud (has to be proved also, of course)...and on & on; I know people here, including you, know the list & how long & disturbing it is.
I believe there is more than enough that rises to the impeachment standard; the difficulty is proving it and getting it disseminated through a strangled, compromised media. The difficulties are gargantuan but we need to remember that the WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING (to use a former-protest-era slogan) thanks largely to the "internets" and I believe the great majority of the world is on our side (for what that's worth?).

Re impeachment: I've read that when a president is convicted in such a trial, the entire administration is convicted also. Anyone know the law on that?

Lastly, and I know this has been posted here before but it certainly bears repeating:

"...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends (of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness), it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness..."
--- Declaration of Independence of the American Colonies, 1776

I don't find Conyers' words chilling. From my point of view, he is stating the obvious and it is heartening to hear it. And I fear for his safety. Others here have mentioned that and I concur. as I believe that those who wish to subvert democracy, in the interest of power and wealth, will stop at nothing.

I will go a step further. I think that manyof us will lose our lives before this is all over. Those who oppose Democracy have gone too far, have committed too many crimes; for them, there is no going back. The Rubicon has been crossed.

I think they will stop at nothing. Theywill ruin reputations. They will ruin lives. They will kill.

It is my opinion that the question that faces us and will face us over and over again is, do we have the will and the courage to see it through? Can we, will we, face any danger?

Joan #33 The impeachment document is like an indictment and must name the individual being impeached and the impeachable offenses as well. These are personal.

If the president is impeached it will only apply to him, and so forth.

Multiple impeachment documents would be required to impeach multiple individuals.

If they were to resign it would extinguish the impeachment proceedings.

If it were to go further it would have to be a criminal proceeding requiring indictment documents in place of impeachment documents.

I do not at all expect this scenario to develop. The out-in-the-open actionable behavior the public would identify with is deceit (lying).

Neither the president nor vice president have lied under oath so as to criminalize the behavior. Their testimony was behind closed doors before the 911 cOmmission, for instance, and the energy hearings cases have so far been won by Cheney.

And congress having been misled by the neocons has rubber stamped the wrongs.

I do not think impeachment will happen, however, I would gladly settle for an MSM that came to its senses and a congress getting sane by an '06 cleansing.

That is more doable than an impeachment at this point in time. And even that is going to be very, very difficult.

But since the exit poll data matches the current popularity poll data we have every reason to hope.

President Bush has violated so many international laws (starting an unprovoked war, human rights violations at Guantánamo Bay, a person could write a book on that subject. Bush is the spoiled and privileged son of a famous and wealthy family. The only thing he did well during his term as Texas governor was execute a record number of people and there is little doubt some were innocent since he never once considered reviewing a death sentence.
During the Vietnam War he snorted coke, smoked dope and drank at frat parties, while many people his age went to Vietnam. He may be the first war-time president, in more than a century, who never served during any war himself.
As for the rest of the Republicans, they seem to believe they can change the rules anytime they need to, so they always win. That’s their idea against the Filibuster.

It is likely if they have impeachment proceedings that Bush's entire administration would be impeached - and incarcerated for their offenses. It is clear not only of the bush administration's illegal conduct but also the complicity in the republican leadership (aiding and abetting), as well as those in the pentagon (aiding and abetting) & central command in Iraq (war crimes), Bush, Rumsfield, Cheney, Condi, Rove, ect. Religious leaders even be implicated. Not to even mention what would come out about the media willing doling out propaganda and ignoring legitimate abuses. ALOT of poeple would go down in flames. And the best part is, with such a large group, a few are bound to agree to some type of amunity deal and expose alot more of Bush&Co's misdeeds (particularly involving 9/11 & other foreign terrorist attacks).

Not to even mention the major corps behind these individuals. It is not unprecidented for congress to seize a corp. because of treason....they did just that....to Prescot Bush's (bush's grandfather)...for financing hitler... Don't take my word for it. Just wait and see.

I'm with ya all the way, Elane 28! What we need isn't just a Million Tinfoil Hat Parade at the Capitol, we need a five million tinfoil hat sit-in that could last for days (fer Christ's sake, the Ukrainians managed it, and we could do it in nice weather, like the 4th of July or Labor Day - of course I go for 4 July because when treating any disease, the sonner we start treatment, the better the chance of full recovery) until the inevitable result of a velvet revolution ensues, however long it takes! We need action NOW!

I think once impeachment proceedings are commenced, or starting to commence, Bush and company will negotiate a deal to resign without prosecution and keep the loot. Unfortunately, Congress and the Senate, to avoid further American embarrassment and to get the matter "overwith" will agree. However, I hope some legal experts, more wiley than Karl Devil Rove himself, may work in some "loop holes" that will allow Bush and company to get charged for war crimes and treason anyway, after they resign. Outwit the criminals!!! I hope the legal beagles are thinking, because they CAN STILL have the evildoers resign, they CAN STILL have their day in court and the lying thieving murderers CAN STILL go to jail!

Trying to impeach Bush without using the last two elections as a focus would not only result in Cheney becoming president (and using presidential power to punish those who forced Bush out), but would embroil us all in a debate over what a "high crime and misdemeanor" is.

That's the Constitutional requirement to impeach a public official. The Iraq invasion, however immoral, was endorsed by Congress. It can't be a high crime or misdemeanor, though it violated international law, because Congress approved it. You'd have to impeach almost everyone on Capitol Hill, too.

Using taxpayer monies to buy media support for administration policies comes a lot closer. Issuing false security alerts for political advantage is fraudulent; that's a misdemeanor, I'd say, but not really a high crime. Allowing a male stud to wander around the White House at will violates Secret Service guidelines, but if lying about Monica wasn't enough to force Clinton from office, Jeff Gannon won't become a high crime or misdemeanor either.

But systematic, deliberate election fraud has to be. They didn't do it once, they did it at least twice and probably oftener. We have mountains of evidence already (Conyers 102-page report being the bible), and if we constantly harp on the theme, "If the exit polls were the basis of overthrowing the Ukraine election, they're good enough to show fraud here," we'll keep the administration on the defensive. They can't argue, "Exit polls don't matter," because they sent Colin Powell to Kiev for the opposite reason.

Then come the flipped votes, the statistical anomalies, the fact that every irregularity favored Bush, the phony security alert and stifled recount in Ohio...it's definitely doable. From a Constitutional standpoint, the election fraud issue that comes closest to a "high crime" or "misdemeanor" might be the deliberate denial of the franchise to minority voters...because it's a deprivation of civil rights.

Cheney couldn't succeed Bush if the basis for impeachment is the two elections, because he was elected fraudulently too. It would go down to Hastert at that point...who could appoint either Gore or Kerry vice president, then resign.

I have a not-entirely-unprecedented idea. We must set up an alternative government, a government based upon the Constitution. We will go nowhere "working within the system," because the system has been warped forever rightward, forever permutating towards absolutism and fascism. We have to retrain and constrain ourselves, thinking "outside the box" of electoral business-as-usual, to be rebels: rebels to anarchy, rebelling at chaos, not peace.

I propose that we define ourselves as the Constitutional American party, elect officials, and seriously - vitally - challenge the usurpers who occupy OUR "white house."